As one of technologies for preventing leakage of information stored in a personal computer (PC), for example, there is known a technology for preventing, when a PC is stolen, information leakage from the stolen PC by erasing an encryption key of an encrypted hard disk drive (HDD) provided in the PC by an instruction from remote. That is, by erasing the encryption key, it becomes impossible to decrypt encrypted information in the HDD so that the information leakage may be prevented.
However, in the above-described technology, since the encryption key may not be erased when the HDD is detached from the PC before the instruction from remote is received, there is a possibility that the encrypted information in the HDD is decrypted by using other PCs.
As a technology capable of solving such problem, for example, as described in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2009-258979, there is a HDD including a self-erasing function in which a disk erasing program and a circuit for executing the erasing program are mounted and, when configuration between a BIOS and the HDD fails, the erasing program is executed to erase information in the HDD.
With this technology, for example, after the HDD is detached from the PC, when trying to connect the HDD to another PC to view the information in the HDD, the information in the HDD is erased at the point when the HDD is connected to another PC to be activated.
However, since the above-described HDD including the self-erasing function may be required modification of hardware, the HDD includes a problem that it is difficult for companies that develop anti-theft technologies for PCs to incorporate the anti-theft technologies in existing HDDs.